Submission to UK Parliamentary Inquiry

Just sent in a submission to the UK Parliamentary Inquiry (cut-off noon Feb 10, 2010) see here . Given the limit of 3000 words – not that I wanted to spend a whole lot more time on something that will probably be disregarded anyway – I focused on paleoclimate rather than CRUTEM (presuming that others will talk about CRUTEM). I discussed bodging, cherry picking and deletion of adverse data (including the “trick”), trying to provide context rather than trying to drain the Climategate swamp. I’ll post it up if that is permitted under the rules, which I’ll check tomorrow.

50 Comments

I don’t understand why they continue calling them “the hacked email exchanges”. Has anyone produced any evidence of anyone from outside CRU “breaking in” and stealing this data? I have not heard of anything like that to date

A submission (opinion paper) is not evidence — so no — they will not hold copyright on your words — at least I can’t see it. If you hand in an original copy of a report or document with annotations by an author etc that proves something I think that would be evidence. Or a part, like you felt you had to submit a sample of seawater, a rock, a lost marble, an original document with a signature that proved a point etc.

I have “The rules of Evidence” here if you want direct quotes. Maybe google for a definition of evidence and the rules — I have not looked.

Re: IanP (Feb 10 01:57), Steve is in no way responsible for the scenario which the scientific community has got themselves into. Not realising that the science has backed itself into a corner doesn’t help matters either.

As noted above submissions to a Select Committee of the House should be kept confidential. However, under normal circumstances all the written and oral evidence presented to the committee is eventually published to the web along with the committee report.

Note that it is likely that the Committee will take oral evidence from people that it believes can nelp in its deliberations. I suspect that if Steve were to offer to provide input via video link this might be welcomed

I’m not sure that is an improvement. Steve has said he accepts there has been global warming. His efforts here are not that of a climate change skeptic but of a climate science auditor. It would be more accurate to describe him as a lukewarmist that has found serious errors in the analyses and who wishes to help correct that. Only Steve can clarify his role in all this, but this is my impression from reading his work.

It unfortunately still makes a distinction that suggests that skeptics cannot be scientists and vice versa. I also wince at the reference to Steve’s “ignorance of climate science”.

Establishing a global mean temperature over time is obviously a multi-disciplinary pursuit. I can easily identify meteorology, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, statistics, data management, and programming as necessary areas of expertise. What mystifies me is the assumption that a climate scientist must be an omniscient master of all disciplines. It should be obvious that a specialist in any one of these disciplines will be more expert in that area than a climate scientist. Whence comes this assumption that a climate scientist is better at statistics than a statistician?

Today in the Netherlands, an article was published in Elsevier stating that : for the IPCC 2007 report, the Netherlands supplied 110 reviewers and lead authors. As it now appears, 109 of these belonged from the GW camp. Four members of the delegation were known environmentalists :
– Donald Pols from Milieudefensie ( a radical environmentalist group )
– Steve Sawyer, Arjette Stevens, Sven Teske from Greenpeace
Steve Sawyer is considered to be one of the best lobbyists from Greenpeace.

Only 1 known skeptic, Mr. Hans Labohm, was invited.

The 4 environmentalists helped in drafting the proposals for measures to be taken. These measures were subsequently adopted by the minister of the environment, Jacqueline Kramer. (she herself has been an active envirnmentalist).

Some members of the Dutch delegation actively profited by the membership.

Questions are being raised in the Dutch parliament today and the VVD ( a rightwing liberal party ) has demanded a clarification from the Dutch prime minister, J.P. Balkenende.

Enter the langugage you’re looking to translate From and To in the appropriate fields, then paste the text or URL of a web page in the text box on the left. Click ‘Translate’ and watch the magic happen.

For web pages, it returns the original page on the left, with the translated version on the right.

I hope that Steve, Jean S and perhaps a few others will consider making formal complaints about the behaviour of Mann, Briffa and Jones asking that their conduct be investigated under the disciplinary procedures of the Penn and East Anglia Universitys. Such formal complaints are likely to wait on the findings of the two reviews before proceeding. However, the substance of any complaint/s is likely to become a part of the reviews now set up. If you wait until after the results of the reviews are published you may find that it is more difficult than it would be now, to have your complaint/s fully considered. That might be because one or both reviews cover the ground about which you wish to complain but do so in a manner that you find inadequate.

One purpose of disciplinary procedures is to try to establish acceptable norms of behaviour. If, for example, one ground of complaint was the cherry-picking of data, those hearing the complaint would have to decide whether that was acceptable or not in terms of University procedures and wider scientific good practice. I think the bristlecone story needs comprehensive re-telling. A big chore perhaps but likely, IMHO, to be worth it. Other Universities would IMO have to pat attention and word will get round.

I am no expert, no scientist, but I think complaints about cherry-picking data, “torturing” the data to reach a pre-conceived conclusion, failing to archive full research information and failing properly to respond to FOIA requests would be what I would want to complain about.

Well I understand there are folks who can identify every piece of bark in this forest of confusion, but you forget that right now the public in general does not know this and is now questioning its unwavering confidence in the IPCC.

This is not about old news a few long time followers of this topic already knew – this is about removing the confidence of the IPCC and allowing the opposing views some time in the lime light to educate the people that there is solid science on the other side of the argument.

Don’t dismiss these moments when the people can have a gestalt awakening and give the skeptics a fair chance to make their case.

Maybe so, but remember that the warmers have also stated many times that they have a right to lie to influence the public because it’s so important to save the world. If we resort to their sort of behavior why should people accept what we say (either)?

BTW, this isn’t a new dichotomy of opinion. I once argued with John Daly, RIP, that he wasn’t always careful to make his statements exact and he responded much as you do. In this case, however, I was more just giving you a fact, thinking you might have been unaware this was normal rhetoric for the IPCC. I thought of saying more, but figured it’s sometimes better to respond than to go into too much detail to begin with.

Looking forward to reading your submission, Steve, when it is available. As an interested lurker, I think that the paleoclimatic evidence (or lack thereof) is the real “smoking gun” in this whole extended conversation. It’s very hard to argue (for or against) the theoretical science of global thermodynamics, but it is not at all hard to argue about the science which attempts to relate the physical evidence (e.g. tree rings, ice cores, etc.) over the past millenia to global theories.

Maybe a similar inquiry will happen in the US. Always the optimist, this email from 1996 says similar US interests might want to have a look at CRU paleo, “Based upon the anticipated award for NOAA support during fiscal year 1997 on climate change data and detection, DOE has authorized the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)…Dr. Phillip Jones shall begin initial work in support of the pilot project identified in the Early Detection of Climate Trends report. He shall prepare for and participate in a meeting on greenhouse signal detection, to be held in Washington, DC on September 17-18, 1996…”

Regarding “rather than trying to drain the Climategate swamp”– I really think that’s the correct approach. One can point out it’s a swamp in another context. One can say, “There’s the drain”…
It’s someone else who has the responsibility and the authority to pull the plug out and watch it drain.

I believe it has to do with how evidence is viewed in a trial setting under British (and its derivative American) law. The judges/jury is supposed to come into the trial impartial, with no preconceptions, or at best rudimentary ones, about the subject matter at hand. If a piece of evidence has been presented to the general public for view and discussion, then that piece may provide a preconception, and therefore be given undue weight in the deliberations and evaluation of the total evidence. Unless the evidence was provided by an eminent authority on the subject being investigated, and his opinion on the matter was already well published, then premature exposure of the piece would probably lead to its exclusion from consideration.

Re: Area Man (Feb 10 12:12), in theory they can deal with this as a contempt of Parliament and in the past could even lock you up in the clock tower (Big Ben would ring every 15 minutes to remind you of your bad behaviour). In practice they would only do this if you were famous and they really wanted to get you, and to avoid it you could provide a suitable apology, or if they wanted to question you and you refused; it is more likely they would simply ignore your submission, which they can do anyway if they wish.

Well I certainly hope you followed the proper MLA Citation Style Rules this time. Remember, The parenthetical reference should precede the punctuation mark that concludes the sentence, clause, or phrase that contains the cited material. Failure to strictly follow these rules will surely cause your submission to be rejected.

The CRU inquiry gets started today but look for a whitewash. The Vice Chancelor of the uni said today that the enquirer has been working with the uni to understand and resolve the issues in one or two of the emails. He also said that they uni would be revisiting some of their major papers but doesn’t expect much in the way of changes because they were all peer reviewed.

Here is an emailed acknowldgement that I have received from the UK Commons Committee.

“Thank you for sending your submission to the Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The submission will be made available to members of the Committee.

The Committee may make use of your evidence for the purpose of carrying out its inquiry, including-if it wishes-printing and publishing your evidence, or making it available for public inspection in the Parliamentary Archives. The Committee will not publish or otherwise disclose personal postal or e-mail addresses or telephone numbers. Once submitted, no public use should be made of your submission unless you have first obtained permission from the Clerk of the Committee.

If, on further consideration, there is information in your submission which you believe to be sensitive, you should contact the Clerk to explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account when deciding whether to publish the evidence.

Details of the programme for the inquiry will appear in press notices and will be published on the Science and Technology Committee website at http://www.parliament.uk/science/.” End quote.

My emailed reply was –

Dear Mr/Dr Boyd,

The submission to which you refer can be used in public by you in its entirely. I wish to make no changes to my submission after reading your email below. I understand completely what your clear email says and means.

While I will not use wording from the submission without the permission of the Clerk, the matter is quite broad and of course I reserve the right to make private and public exchanges about the subject matter of the Inquiry, without quoting from my Inquiry material, or indeed even referring to the Inquiry.

I would be pleased if you made two small grammar corrections. The first is so that the relevant sentence reads “The Committee might make use of your evidence….” “May” implies permission, “might” implies probability.

The second suggestion is to rephrase “ … disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit …”. This could be read as a fact that the CRU was the source of the disclosure, as it might have been, but that is not established to my knowledge.

If you wish to make a direct quotation from my submission, I request that I see it in context before release. At other times and in other places, I have been quoted out of context in Parliamentary reports. I do not seek a repetition.

If you are establishing an automatic email notification broadcast system for statements from the Committee, would you please include me on the mailing list? There is limited success these days in asking a multiplicity of interested individuals to open a web site from time to time, merely to see if an addition has been made.

I wish you well with your Inquiry. I regard it as very important in the progress of science.
END of response.

I spoke to Andy Boyd on the telephone on Thursday after I received the same form email as Geoff. I said I’d been thinking of emailing Phil Willis with further concerns I have and he assured me that any email on this subject will be read, very carefully, at the moment. Formal submissions will have personal details like address, telephone numbers and email addresses taken out, then presented to the committee (I think he said on the 24th), then published on paper and on the Web. That should all be done this month.